Liquid or center-filled gum and other confectionery products are in popular demand today. Typically, these products have a solid exterior portion and a soft or liquid-type center. The outer portion can be chewing gum or bubble gum of some type, while the liquid center portion can be a flavored material typically having a syrup-like consistency.
There are also products having a chewing gum or bubble gum core with a hard sugar or sugarless shell on the exterior. These products include, for example well-known pellet gum products sold under the brand names Chiclets®, Clorets®, and Dentyne-Ice®. Both liquid filled and coated gum products are in popular demand.
Conventional center-filled gum products having a liquid-filled center portion, a second layer of chewing gum or bubble gum material surrounding the liquid, and a hard outer shell or coating suffer from undesirable migration of the liquid into the gum base region. This results in a product which is not commercially acceptable. Loss of the center-fill not only impacts the initial organoleptic qualities of the gum, i.e., initial liquid “burst”, but also may alter the physical appearance and overall shelf-life stability of the product.
One possible cause of the loss in liquidity of the center-fill is from moisture migration from the center-fill to the surrounding gum layer. This problem has most frequently been addressed by alteration of the center-fill composition.
Patents which included a specifically formulated center-fill composition to overcome the loss of liquidity problem include: U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,983 to Cifrese et al., wherein the center-fill included a hydrogenated starch hydrolysate; U.S. Pat. No. 4,250,196 to Friello which provides a center-fill which includes a combination of water and hydrogenated starch hydrolysate; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,252,829 to Terrevazzi (“Terrevazzi”) which discloses a center-fill formulation including propylene glycol and sorbitol.
Other attempts to address the loss of liquidity have provided formulations which are intended to control the water content of the center-fill. Specifically, U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,138 to Glass et al provides a low-moisture liquid center-filled gum composition.
One common factor of the commercially available center-fill gum compositions is the size of the gum piece. On average, the weight of such chewing gum pieces is approximately five grams, such as those disclosed in Terrevazzi. Until the present invention, smaller center-filled gum pieces, i.e., less than three grams per piece, have not been made and thus the problems associated with center-filled gum have not existed with such smaller pieces. Smaller gum pieces, such as 2-3 gram sizes and configurations such as pellet gums, have more surface area relative to the liquid-fill and thus, maintaining liquidity of the center-fill and preventing migration into and through the surrounding gum region becomes more critical and challenging.
There is a need for new gum compositions, and particularly hard or crunchy coated gums, which provide the desired hard shell coating layer in combination with a center-fill gum, while resisting loss of liquidity. This is also a need for a center-filled gum, which retains its liquid center during manufacturing and during its shelf-life, and which can be made in a reduced piece-size without loss of the liquid-center fill properties. In addition, it would be desirable to have a center-fill chewing gum with prolonged sensory characteristics, such as sweetness and flavor intensity.